Sirens of DemiMonde (HalfWorld Trilogy Book 1)

by N. Godwin

  I run my fingers through my hair and sigh. “It’ll be okay, sweet friend. Nothing awful lasts forever. Cross my heart.”

  I can detect a faint breathing, erratic, as if the kid on the other end of the line is scared maybe, but not in pain I hope… I just need to hear him or her say something to be certain.

  “Are you hurt or in pain now? Do you need me to come and pick you up? Tell me where you are and I can be there in minutes. I drive this old red Jeep. I can come alone if you’d prefer.”

  I hear a gasp.

  “Aw, sweet friend, please, won’t you tell me-- tell me if you need me.”

  A host of voices begin breathing erratically out of the phone, like a Junkanoo of drums beating in tune with the frogs and crickets of the night. The phone suddenly becomes too warm and burns my palm. I can hear deep breathing now, not an obscene pant, just an intimate masculine rhythm that leaves my voice lodged in my chest. I can feel myself begin to sweat. Its sound leaves me feeling exposed, naked. And it’s too darn early in the morning for this kind of nonsense.

  “I don’t understand why you’d do this!” I shout. “Why would you make me believe you’re a child who’s all alone and scared? What in God’s name is the matter with you? Why can’t you all just leave me alone?”

  Seven Deadly No-Nos

  I’m late opening this morning because Billy du jour kept us awake most the night with his ranting after Hobie found his stash and flushed it. Needless to say, we’re all pretty spent and ornery this morning.

  I guess I’d expected the unexpected from Eunice, because when I walked in the café I had hoped she wouldn’t be sitting over there alone in the dark, smoking. I notice the huge pile of cigarette butts surrounding her. Since I’m in charge of bringing life to this place, I begin flipping the switches in the fuse box for the grills and fryers. I flip the light switch and can see Eunice has been sitting in the dark, crying, and I stop in my tracks because I have never seen her cry before.

  An impulse makes me want to ask her what’s up and see if I can help or something, but I don’t because I’m more than a little afraid of what she might say, and I must confess I’m disoriented and grouchy before I get my morning coffee (especially after only three hours of sleep), and I’m becoming more than a little annoyed with the adults in charge dropping the ball and running in the opposite direction.

  Do you ever wonder who’s really running this planet anyhow, and then, when you really think about it does it scare the holy beJesus out of you?

  Eunice motions for me to bring her a fresh bottle of wine. I flip on the coffee urn on my way by then disappear into the kitchen to grab a dark green bottle out of the wine rack (her morning wine that’s one quarters water and three quarter wine). As I shake it a though occurs. I take two steps backwards from the kitchen sink and look over the bar to study Eunice’s silhouette for a moment.

  Yep, she’s too smashed. She only makes the day unbearable when she gets this far gone. I grab one of her clear empty bottles instead and fill it with grape Juicy Juice, pop the cork loosely back on then deliver it to her table. She doesn’t even acknowledge me so I head straight to the aromatic coffee urn.

  As I finally take my first chug of the day, I notice Eunice taking hers without missing a beat. I wonder how sobriety will work for Eunice, and I smile.

  By 11:00 a.m. Eunice has picked on enough people to piss off the entire state of Florida. By the time Killer Ken hits the kitchen with butt-headed Billy in tow, and John and Alan (our friends from the amusement park) arrive for a late breakfast, the entire café has had enough Eunice to last for a year. At this point, I’ve refused to deliver any more of her scathing annotations. She keeps picking everyone apart, telling the dudes why their parents hate them, how the world is in the mess it’s in because of our taste in music and lack of refinement, or how our mothers are spineless whores, or how Hobie needs to see a dermatologist and Alan needs a high-hard one with a girl because he’s too blankity blank emasculated by his church. Since Alan goes to my church she got two zingers in for the price of one. I’ve never once seen her like this. She hasn’t even asked me to comb her hair.

  By the time Fat Sandy and Freckles-the-beer-man come in to shoot the breeze with Eunice and she refuses to extend civility even to them, this whole place has turned to mutiny. Face it, if she can piss off Freckles you know she’s in rare, ugly form.

  At this point, I realize the error of my ways and relent and give Eunice one of her half and half bottles. But as I look over at Hobie, I realize he’s with Killer Ken, Fat Sandy, Alan and John gathered conspiratorially in a corner, whispering and staring at Eunice, I realize it may be too late. I head over to them and tell them to be kind to her because it’s my fault not hers, but they don’t seem to care much whose fault it is. Even Freckles is looking guilty. I watch as he heads back outside to his truck (just in case he’s tempted by the dark side of this angry mob) and I know we’re in for big trouble. Eunice is a loud sitting duck.

  At precisely 11:17 a.m. Fat Sandy makes her way back to the ladies room and disappears inside and locks the door. Ken and Hobie are huddled in the kitchen laughing over their brilliance while Alan and John sit at the bar staring at the vintage horses circling around on the old Budweiser clock so they can watch Eunice in the bar mirror without turning around and looking too obvious.

  By 11:19 Eunice is beginning to fidget. She looks back towards the bathroom then back over to the clock. I look away engrossed in an order when Ringo Starr informs us it’s 11:20 a.m., readying the world for Eunice’s imminent stand. Fat Sandy is still occupying the ladies room. Most bets are on Eunice trying to use the men’s room even though deviating from her pattern will drive her crazy. The few optimists have doubled down and bet she’ll head upstairs to her private apartment where no one has ever seen her go. There is big money riding on the outcome.

  Eunice is turning red but hasn’t budged. She has clearly seen Fat-Sandy head to the bathroom. All eyes are on Eunice as she swings her leg back and forth like she is about to burst, and raps on the table with gnawed-down nails.

  There must be twenty people betting on the outcome, and I don’t like this game. At 11:23 I feel the need to tell Eunice that she is being drawn out by professionals.

  “Go the hell away!” she hisses at me like a viper.

  Stunned, I step back. Eunice never swears, never. It is No-No Number 1 of the Seven Deadly No-Nos. “Only an idiot resorts to profanity!” is one of her favorite mantras. Well, that and “Ronald Reagan would never have been caught dead doing that.”

  “Eunice?” I ask softly but before I can finish I see her face contort. I’m not even going to tell you what I hear, what I smell. It defies logic.

  It occurs to me that Eunice has done the deed right here in her pants. I am dumbfounded, disgusted and yet oddly amused by her refusal to be a pawn in anyone’s game. I reach out to pat her hand but stop short. I try again but can’t. When I look at her she is studying my face carefully.

  She reaches out and pats my hand instead and I struggle to ignore the shock. “Jimmy-Sue, it’s all right, sugar. You don’t have to touch until you’re ready.” She sounds suddenly sober. “I’m okay now, honey. Honest.”

  The gang catches on slowly. It takes them at least five minutes before they realize Eunice just won’t be had. We all try not to make eye contact as Fat Sandy, John and Alan pays their tabs and leave, too dumbfounded for words.

  “Man, you people are so weird,” Billy DuJour says again.

  Needless to say, no one goes near Eunice for the rest of the day.

  I keep trying to reconcile today’s bar tab with the register receipts. Eunice is sitting several tables over from me lamenting that she didn’t invest in beachfront property instead of here when she had the chance. She complains about this often since you can jump across the street and the values escalate ten times over. Every Floridian over forty that I know has a story about if only they’d invested when…

  “Back then beachfront was actuall
y cheaper than this side of the road because no one liked all the sand and rust from the wind,” she complains. “Back then--”

  Eunice mourns until her drowsy head falls across her spreadsheets and I’m still sitting up at the register trying to reconcile these darn receipts! I’m off by six cents again. I cannot rationally explain the anger this causes me.

  There is a huge bang and the lights flicker then blessedly die along with my calculator. Somebody flicks a lighter, then another and another. I hand Hobie a long lighter and we scatter to light the candles on the tables before somebody gets hurt.

  I hear Ken mutter Killer a few times to his constant side-kick, Horst Gunther, as he switches off the fuse box in the kitchen. Horst gets busy lighting candles, offering reassuring words to anyone who might be afraid of the dark, even though the sudden appearance of him showing up at their table with his glow in the dark Mohawk and henna tattoos is probably scarier to the unsuspecting tourists than sitting in the dark.

  I study Horst for a moment, my number 7, and chuckle when he bangs into a table, sending the contents crashing to the floor. He is always crashing in to something or other as if his clumsy body can’t keep pace with its own rapid growth.

  Everyone likes Horst Gunther. At first, he looks a lot like his name sounds, down to his pretty baby face and soft-spoken demeanor, but there’s a niggling doubt that his name doesn’t suit him for some reason I just can’t put my finger on. Even though his accent is almost gone now, there is something very foreign about him, something not logical to his environment. I swear he’s told me two different places he was from even though he denies it, then blushes. Lying does not come naturally to him.

  I think that’s why he’s made the list, because of that something about him that doesn’t add up. I don’t know what happened to his parents but he lives with his aunt and uncle and grandmother, I think.

  So, I’m thinking witness protection maybe, or possibly a refugee from some exotic military coup, or a mail-order kid? I don’t know for sure… But Horst is very nice, maybe a little too nice, too attentive, too…something.

  The Halfworld feels eerie in the dark, in utter silence, and something is a little off tonight. I can smell it in the air, and I can’t shake the feel that I am being watched from somewhere just outside in the dark. I pass Eunice’s table and she’s still passed out, her face resting against this month’s inventory sheets. Her glasses flicker in the candlelight. From here she looks like a grotesque mannequin, her left hand still clutching her watered down wine. No one besides me has gone near her for some nine hours now, so for all they know she could be dead.

  Outside the headlights from the cars are just a blur in the heavy rain, and all down The Strip the lights are off. I feel an odd trepidation coming over me. Even though I know the storm is outside and I am safely inside, it still feels as if things were shifting around me now at a rapid pace, and I stare out into the black rain frowning.

  “God, I hate the rain,” Hobie whispers coming to stand beside me.

  I look at his reflection in the window; he’s taller than I am now. When I first found him two years back, huddled on my doorstep, Hobie was at least a head shorter than this new reflection.

  “It reminds me of him.” The disgust in Hobie’s voice masks the fear in his eyes.

  I know that, like me, the thunder harbors his worst nightmares. Stormier nights than I can remember he’s shown up at my room hugging his pillow, his thin fifteen year old body trembling while he makes rapid chatter, rattling on excuse after excuse until I give in and let him crash on my floor until the storm passes, just like the night I’d met him. He’d deny it though if I ever told anyone, which I wouldn’t.

  One of the tourists begins enlightening the café about some crazed hatchet murderer from Washington County who’d gone and chopped up his wife and kids and stored them all in Ziplock baggies. Considering these kids have seen just about anything, they’re not a hard bunch to convince. Hobie huddles closer.

  Randy begins to chuckle. “Yep, that murderer’s one big, ugly football nigger, just like O.J.,” he says.

  Ken and Hobie snort pig grunts in Randy’s direction while the uninformed look quickly at Eunice to gauge her reactions to the N word. I’ve long since stopped being annoyed about Eunice’s reaction. Ken and I used to fight that battle until we finally realized we weren’t so much fighting Randy as we were Eunice. As long as you don’t swear you could call her purple for all she cares.

  “Was not a black guy!” someone yells, and then another.

  “He was seven feet tall they say,” Randy continues. “Wife was white though. Chop, chop, chop.” He tomahawks the air.

  “Nah, the guy was some white, inbred who ain’t never seen the inside of a church.”

  “Or a bank.”

  “Sounds like Randy!” Hobie’s laugh is a little too loud.

  “Course, serves the white whore right, diluting the species and all,” Randy says as he stops to consider his logic for a moment. “I tell ya the whole world is going to Hades in a hand basket.” His sigh is long and dramatic.

  “You’re a pig, Randy,” Horst says.

  “Ditto,” Ken agrees.

  “Nope, I just say what every white guy’s really thinking.”

  I cringe at this thought as all the dudes and other males erupt with one collective “No way!”

  I stare out the window, watching the rain in front of me while checking out the reflections of everyone in the café behind me. I notice that we’re all superimposed here, coexisting in my stormy, half-dimensional world.

  As I study the reflective faces I swear I can see something moving towards me from the rain, something menacing and dark. I freeze in place as I stare harder at the figure, watching in horror as it materialize before my eyes. I gasp when the huge, dark shadow steps across the invisible boundary line from out of the black. This demon is tall, wild-eyed and I freeze in place, unable to look away, praying hard that this ghoul is only a figment of my simple imagination, too.

  There is a sudden deafening crash of thunder and lightning outside and I watch as this demon heads straight towards me. My knees have frozen and my tongue is like cement and I know in a moment I will finally meet my destiny when it crashes through the glass and grabs me by my throat! I breathlessly watch when the other beasts suddenly appear from out of the shadows and rain only a plate glass away.

  “What are they?” Hobie shouts from behind me.

  Hobie sees my demons, too and screams just as the front door crashes open. The rain and wind pounding in extinguish both our candles as well as those on the surrounding tables. The room grows deadly quiet as the two beasts perch in the doorway and survey us with grim, determined expressions. They are both so black it’s hard to tell where they end and the night begins. You can tell by their frowns that food and drink are the last things on their agenda. Still, I cannot speak as they crank their necks around and scan our perimeter, our faces, and my vulnerability.

  They stand rooted in the doorway, seemingly unable to enter our sanctuary and this makes them momentarily angry as they hit each other with balled fists. I pray silently, quickly the mantra, over and over again, and watch in amazement when the beasts began evolving before me. Just as suddenly as they’d appeared, they turn from terrible demon to terrible man as they finally manage to break through and step inside our candlelight.

  Randy couldn’t have imagined two scarier looking black dudes if he’d tried. On reflex I step back and almost trip over Hobie, who’s already made a fast retreat behind me. The lead guy approaches me first. He reaches out lightening fast and grabs my wrist.

  His hand is hot and wet and his grip burns into my flesh as I cry out.

  “You got a phone?” he shouts at me.

  I mumble something, praying he’ll let go because his touch is draining my life force quickly, too quickly. He smells odd, like burning rubber and his eyes… His demon eyes are terrifying, fixed and wide as he stares at me with loathing while his touch sears
into my flesh.

  “You got a phone?”

  I can only gape at his grotesque hand clutching my wrist. It’s searing into my flesh! I can hear it sizzle and smell his putrid skin as his flesh burns into mine! As our eyes meet, I can feel the evil in his soul.

  Let me go! I am dizzy and can’t breathe… Like a vampire, he is draining me and I can feel my knees begin to buckle.

  “Let her go!” Horst declares in a threatening voice stepping beside me in the nick of time. “The phone’s over there.” He motions over his shoulder to the bar, Randy’s bar.

  Although Horst is barely twenty he stands almost as tall as this strange, angry man. They study one another closely. You can see the beast’s eyes assess Horst’s orange and blue Mohawk and the large Albert the Alligator, henna-tattoo covering his left bicep.

  The stranger must be a fan and seems to reconsider and thankfully throws down my wrist before I just burst into flames and incinerate right out in front of God and everybody.

  “Just another stupid bitch!” he grunts at me. “Everywhere I look, another stupid bitch,” he snarls.

  The other man follows him muttering something to the effect that all women were created useless, while everyone else just stares at the two creepy men while I can only study my wrist. I can still see his evil mark upon me, his pulsating red fingerprints evaporating slowly from my tortured flesh that should be charred but isn’t, while these strangers step deeper and deeper inside our sanctuary.

  They are vile and I think I should run away from them and hide. I need to leave their presence, but I can’t. I have to protect my flock because they do not know the depths of the evil here, and we can give it no ground.